


a love gift utterly unasked for by a sky

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [87]
Category: Leverage, White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Backstory, Blood, Child Abuse, Eliot Spencer has always been badass, Gen, M/M, Sexual Abuse, everyone knew everyone in foster care, the system failing hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal doesn't owe many people favors. He goes out of his way to avoid it, actually. He learned early that anyone with power over him would abuse it, and he spent most of his life trying to reach a place where no one could touch him.</p><p>[Neal Caffrey and Eliot Spencer were foster brothers for awhile.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	a love gift utterly unasked for by a sky

**Author's Note:**

> Title: a love gift utterly unasked for by a sky  
> Fandom: Leverage/White Collar  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: AU for Neal's backstory; mentions of child abuse and non-con  
> Pairings: thoughts about Eliot/Neal; mentions of OMC/Neal  
> Rating: PG13  
> Wordcount: 650  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: Leverage/White Collar, Eliot/Neal, Neal didn't owe many people favors.

Neal doesn't owe many people favors. He goes out of his way to avoid it, actually. He learned early that anyone with power over him would abuse it, and he spent most of his life trying to reach a place where no one could touch him.

(Yeah, that didn't work out so well. But he knows, and he thinks maybe Peter does, too, that Neal could be gone tomorrow and not even Peter could find him again.

Neal's had almost two years, now, to learn how the FBI works from the inside. He could vanish in an hour and never leave a trail for Peter to pick up.)

Neal hates to owe favors, and there are three people in the world he knows he can never repay. He'll owe them forever, and the three of them will never ask him to settle the debt. None of them even think a debt exists.

Peter's the third, for this chance to go legitimate. And the way he keeps trusting Neal, the way he's let Neal into his life. Letting him have Elizabeth as an almost-sister, letting Satchmo sprawl all over him on the couch that no other agent would've let him touch. Treating him like something between a kid-brother and a son. (At least, the way Neal thinks a son should be treated. Not something he ever really knew before Peter.)

Mozzie's second, because of that thing when Neal was seventeen. Taking in a punk kid with a broken arm, bruises, and blood. Tucking him into bed with chicken soup and hand-feeding him when anyone else would've just thrown him back onto the street. It took Neal four months to believe Moz would never demand repayment, and that's why Neal will take any job Mozzie asks of him.

And Eliot. Eliot Spencer. That wasn't his name then, of course. Either of them. Neal wouldn't be Neal for ten years, and Eliot wouldn't be Eliot until he started retrieving the impossible.

Neal was six and Eliot ten when they met at the Danwall's, a foster family in Topeka. Eliot had a sister somewhere in the system and Neal was completely alone. Eliot was angry at the world; Neal was tiny and still dreamt of happily ever after.

Neal has had over two decades to think about those months. Every angle, every possible ending. Almost a decade of following Eliot's career, covertly, of course. Wouldn't do to lead the authorities to one of three men in the world he'd pick up a gun for.

And Neal has thought about what he'd tell Eliot, if he ever worked up the nerve to speak to him again.

(Vince Danwall always watched Neal. And Eliot always watched Vince.

Vince wasn't the first or last man to look at Neal like that, but he was the first to make a move. Eliot was almost too late, and he was barely eleven years old. But he did have surprise on his side, and a carving knife he stole from the kitchen.

Neal, Eliot, and another boy were taken from the Danwall family. Vince died before the paramedics arrived.

Eliot taught Neal that he could fight back, and it would be ten years before someone finally got the better of him.

And if he ever works up the nerve to show up at the apartment Eliot never takes anyone to, if he actually had the guts to knock on that door, he thinks he would kiss Eliot, and pull him close, and just soak up his warmth and his strength and his sheer presence.

Because that decade taught him that he could be something more. They're how he survived that night he collapsed a dozen feet from Moz and four years in prison.

He'd try to thank Eliot, but words don't exist for what a kid two days past his eleventh birthday gave a sobbing six year old.)


End file.
